Migrants’ entrapment in a ‘state of expectancy’. Patterns of im/mobility for agricultural workers in Manolada, Greece.

This chapter examines the precarious and unfree labour conditions and im/mobility of Bangladeshi migrants in Manolada as well as in other agricultural geographies of their temporary relocation within Greece. Drawing upon a theoretical framework inspired by scholarship on migrants’ precarity, labour geography and the aspiration/capability model, the chapter explores im/mobility patterns as an outcome of both socio-legal constraints and migrants’ livelihood strategies. Based on 29 semi-structured on-site interviews with Bangladeshi migrants working in the strawberry-producing area of Manolada, we argue on the existence of a ‘mobility in immobility’ pattern, which is the outcome of migrants’ ‘state of expectancy’ regarding their regularization process and further mobility planning. We conclude on the importance of this pattern in shaping exclusionary geographies of coercion and unfreedom.